HUNTSVILLE — Millennium Engineering and Integration has opened a second location in Huntsville where it will develop products for the Department of Defense and NASA.
Arlington, Va.-based Millennium, an employee-owned company that specializes in space and weapon systems and advanced technologies, opened an office in Huntsville in late 2005 with a staff of three. Its original focus was on engineering services.
Since then, the Huntsville operation has added product development and now has 100 employees and consultants.
The company plans to continue its growth here, said Dennis E. Smith, Millennium’s vice president, Integrated Systems, who’s based in Huntsville.
“We have aggressive goals,” he said today before a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the offices at 5025 Bradford Drive. “We hope to have more (locations) in the future.”
Jeremiah Knight, vice chair for workforce with the Huntsville/Madison County Chamber of Commerce, said Millennium “continues to flourish in our community.” He described the company as “one of the success stories that drive the Huntsville/Madison County economy.”
One “breakthrough technology” for Millennium, said Smith, is the Remote Explosive Analysis and Detection System (READS), an effort sponsored by the Army Space and Missile Defense Command.
READS can simultaneously track multiple human threats in hostile environments and detect concealed weapons or explosives. Millennium successfully demonstrated the new sensor technology at the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization in Camp Edwards, Mass., this year.
“The program has made significant progress in the last year,” Smith said during a demonstration for Rep. Parker Griffith, R-Huntsville. “The biggest challenge is to ‘train’ the system to get smarter and smarter.”
Millennium has also built and tested two cameras for NASA that can scan the interior and exterior of rocket engine nozzles to check for erosion or any coating anomalies. The cameras will be tested further this year, said Smith.